


find the sky

by Reishiin



Category: Yu-Gi-Oh! Zexal
Genre: Gen, Post-Canon, Soul Room(s) (Yu-Gi-Oh)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-29
Updated: 2017-12-29
Packaged: 2019-02-23 15:01:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,343
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13192596
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Reishiin/pseuds/Reishiin
Summary: After Astral rewrites the world, Vector falls into a long sleep, and Ryouga walks through his memories to find him.





	find the sky

**Author's Note:**

> With gratitude to [Xephonia](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Xephonia/pseuds/Xephonia). You know what for.

 

 

 

 

 

 

After Astral rewrites the world, Vector falls into a long, long sleep; his heartbeat and breathing are regular, but only just, and he will not wake for anything. The others settle him in a spare room in Ryouga's house out of the way, and then go about the business of settling and rebuilding their own lives. Yuuma will not leave Vector's side, and Ryouga wrangles an IV to keep the bastard alive and then lets himself be frustrated: as long as Vector remains in this state, he cannot make good on the promise he made to protect them all.

Three days later, having finally sent Yuuma home with the promise of news should anything happen, Ryouga sits in the chair that had been Yuuma's and watches the slow rise and fall of Vector's breathing where he lies still sleeping. "You're a right piece of work, I hope you know."

He reaches beneath the lapel of his jacket; pulls the Barian Emblem from around his neck and loops the cord once around Vector's wrist, then once around his own. Lays his hands over both of Vector's, over the emblem.

If Vector decided he's not coming back, then Ryouga will just have to go find him.

He tucks his head into the crook of his arm and closes his eyes. Sleep is a long time coming. Vector's hands are cool and dry under his own, and in the dark behind his eyelids, he can feel his own pulse.

In the evenings when Ryouga walks home from school, the sky over Heartland River has always seemed stained with blood; now he knows it is like the light of sunset that lay over the silent plains where two armies fell, centuries ago. He holds fast in his mind the image of Vector falling away that day, alongside the sickening awareness that he has failed enough and he must not, this time. It's like tumbling after Yuuma all over again, like diving after Merag, and _goddamn it you mad bastard please wake up_.

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

Prince Nasch visited Vector's home only once, but the architecture had left an impression: closed windows and doors that left the interior of the castle dark and the air stale, spacious halls that were filled with strange silence even then. In Poseidon the castle halls were always bustling with servants and courtiers, but here, they are quiet.

Now the front hall is furnished not with carpets and portraits but Heartland Academy's school desks and chairs; where a great fireplace had been is now a set of blackboards covered with middle school math equations, and on the far side of the room, a set of great double doors. At a desk near the boards sits a boy, not more than eight or nine years old and dressed in Prince Vector's clothes.

The boy turns and sees Ryouga, and immediately runs to him and blinks up at him with wide eyes. "Hello. What's your name?"

"Ryouga," he replies. "What's yours?"

"Ryou-ga," the boy repeats slowly, tripping over the sound as he tries out the word. "I'm Vector. You look a lot like someone I know, the prince from the other kingdom across the sea. But you're older than he is...." He trails off, considering. "Let's play a game, shall we?" the boy says. "I'll hide, but not too far. You count down from ten, then come find me." Without waiting for a response he pulls at the corner of Ryouga's jacket and spins Ryouga around, and by the time Ryouga turns back, he is gone. The double doors on the far end of the room are just falling closed, and the hall is empty except for him.

Next to him, the desks are arranged neatly in rows of five, and on the blackboards there are quadratic equations in two colours of chalk.  Ryouga flips one of the boards. On the other side is a map of some sort.

He checks every corner of the room, but the child is nowhere to be seen. So he crosses the hall, pulls open the door and steps into the corridor beyond. It is longer and narrower than he remembers it being, and pale sunlight streams through the dirt-caked windows, illuminating dusty air and the brightly coloured portraits lining the walls: Shingetsu Rei in a Heartland Academy uniform, Shingetsu Rei sleeping in class, eating lunch with the Numbers Club.

Every time the corridor opens to a room, Ryouga checks it, too. But the rooms are all completely empty, and dust cakes the air behind the heavy velvet curtains closed against the light outside.

At the end of the corridor is a junction. Ryouga pulls back a corner of the carpet to mark the way he came, then makes a left and continues on. The portraits continue: Shingetsu Rei sitting with a stray cat on the school roof, or running down the path to Yuuma's front door with a smile and the morning sun in his eyes, or walking alone by Heartland River as the day passes away.

An interminable amount of searching later Ryouga finds a room that is brighter than the others. The curtains are drawn, letting light into the room, and it is furnished with a long table lined with chairs. The child prince is hiding behind the great chair at the head of the table, and as he pokes his head out at Ryouga's approaching footsteps Ryouga says, "We said not to go too far, right?"

The boy nods. "Mm. But you took so long to count down, I got tired of waiting. And in the end, you found me anyway, didn't you?" He smiles so wide his eyes crinkle, and he tugs the circlet from his head and hands it to Ryouga. "Here, take this. As the prize for winning."

He beams brightly as Ryouga takes it from his hands.

Just then the doors creak open, letting in a shaft of sunlight that illuminates the dusty air in the room. That is strange: the corridor outside had been barely lit. A cloaked figure steps through and pushes back his hood, and the face beneath twists in surprise. "Nasch? It's Nasch, is it?"

Prince Vector, fourteen or fifteen, regards Ryouga with curiosity and frowns.

The child lets go of Ryouga's hand, and runs to hide behind the prince's skirts; Vector pats his younger self's head briefly and whispers a few words, and the boy nods and vanishes up a set of stairs in the corner of the room that had not been there before. The prince turns to Ryouga again. "... No," he seems to conclude, "You're not him. Then who are you?"

"Ryouga."

Prince Vector's lips quirk. "Okay. Why are you here, Ryouga?"

He's—not sure. "I'm looking for something."

"What is it? Maybe I can help you find it."

"I don't know."

"Mm." The prince's smile is polite, his expression unreadable. "Since it's not in here, let's go outside."

He turns and pulls the room's heavy double doors open again. Beyond is no longer the dusty inner corridor of the castle, but the blinding midday light of an open courtyard outside; it is a cold season, and the sun hangs low and pale behind a cloud in the sky. Through the gap in the door Ryouga sees that the hedges in the garden are all overgrown, and red flowers bloom over towering hedges of green.

The prince pulls another cloak from a stand that also had not been there before, then turns to Ryouga and holds it out. "Let's walk, shall we?"

The air in the courtyard is dry and cold, and Ryouga dons the cloak and clasps the heavy brown material over his throat. Before them hedges rise on either side, forming a corridor of foliage as far as the eye can see, the sunlight streaming between the greenery leaving it brighter than the castle halls had been, but no less confining.

Ryouga follows the prince into the hedgerow maze, and the prince touches the red flowers lightly as he passes. "At this time of day, in this light, they're very intense, aren't they? People say you shouldn't linger too long around bright colours like this. But they are so very beautiful..."

The hedge wall looms high before them and the prince lingers at the junction, then turns left, and Ryouga follows him. Flowers litter the ground, and in the patches of  light filtering through the leaves, the red of their petals piled on the ground is like spilled blood or the sunrise. Vector leads the conversation just as he leads them through the hedgerow, and Ryouga clutches the child prince's circlet in his hand, and follows.

"My father went mad," the prince says quietly, "like his father before him. I will, too. Or I already have. I tried to fight it, but in the end, you can't escape who you are..."

— _who you have always been._

The prince draws to a halt by a gap in the hedge. Between the walls of green Ryouga can see the sea, and the shoreline where the glimmer of water meets the cloudless blue sky. In the distance, over the ocean by the sun's resting place, black shapes break the line of the horizon. Someone is coming here," he observes.

At his side, the prince nods. "That person has travelled a long, long way to take back what is his." He turns to Ryouga. "You must leave before he arrives."

"What will happen when he reaches here?"

"There will be a terrible fight, and..." He pauses. "No one will live, Nasch."

The prince steps out from the gap in the hedgerow and and onto the seashore, flat shoes sinking into the sand, and Ryouga runs with him down to the waterline. Tethered to a wooden post in the ground is a small fishing-boat, and as Ryouga draws near he sees that there is a trapdoor in the boat's floor just big enough for a person to fit through.

Vector stoops beside the boat and pulls the panel open. Inside is a set of stairs leading downward as far as Ryouga can see, much, much farther than where the bottom of the boat must be. It is illuminated by torches embedded in the walls, stretching into the darkness beyond.

The prince stands up; unclasps the sword at his left hip and holds it out to Ryouga. "You need it more than I do."

Ryouga turns the sword over; the weight and balance of it is unfamiliar in his hands. He fastens it and the child prince's circlet at his side, then turns back to Vector. "Then what about you?"

But the prince only turns to look at the horizon in the distance, so that Ryouga cannot see his eyes. "It doesn't matter. This is just a dream, isn't it?"

He shakes his head again, and motions Ryouga to continue his descent. Once Ryouga is a safe distance beneath the surface the prince pulls the trapdoor closed over Ryouga's head. As the panel slides, it shuts out the sunlight, and as and the interior of the corridor grows steadily darker Ryouga thinks he hears the prince whisper again, "You know, you really remind me of..."

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

The passageway is long and lit at intervals with fire-torches bolted to the wall that never seem to burn low. After a fashion the downward stairs stop and the passageway evens out; several hundred paces later steps start again, going upwards this time. At the top there is a trapdoor not unlike the first one, and Ryouga slides it open and emerges into a red world of crystal and stone.

A few minutes' exploration leads him to a cavern whose floor is densely littered with rock and crystals glimmering in the red light. In each crystal he sees reflected not his own face but a Barian face, smooth and featureless. On the far side of the hall, at the top of a long flight of stairs, the Barian Throne. Vector is squatting on the chair, and the sound of Ryouga's shoes making too much noise on the steps makes him glance up.

He peers closely at Ryouga's face, then twists his own into a sneer. "What do you want?"

"A friend of mine got lost," Ryouga says. "I'm looking for him."

Vector's face wrinkles in disgust. " _Responsible._ Just like that guy _._ Talk like him too, even."

Ryouga waits.

"The Barian Sea. Where all the garbage goes. Whatever you're looking for will be there."

Ryouga nods, then turns as if to go on his way. "You know the Barian God is just using you, don't you?"

Vector glares. "Explain."

"—Lead the way," Ryouga says.

  


 

Between the meeting place and the Barian Sea is a wasteland of crystal and stone. Vector walks with purpose, feet making no noise against the rocky road, and Ryouga follows. "What do you know about the Barian God?"

"Many years ago he grew too powerful to be contained. When he fought the Astral and lost, the Astral sealed him away. Since then, he has only wanted to be free. Whatever he promised you. It isn't real."

Vector sneers and makes no reply.

They come to a fork in the road: one path leads to a the forest of trees, the other through a valley of silent stone. In the distance Ryouga can see the dark sea beneath stormclouds, water even now corroding away the land where it encroaches on the shore. Vector considers, then turns left toward the stone, where a narrow path winds between rock faces that rise impossibly high on either side.

"And the Astral Emissary?" Ryouga asks as they walk into the shadow of the valley, his voice small in the vast stillness. He keeps pace at Vector's side.  "Have you found him yet?"

"Yes. He has no memories and no protection. He's done for."

"So you haven't fought him," Ryouga observes quietly. "Don't underestimate Tsukumo Yuuma. He and the Astral Emissary are stronger than you know."

"Them? As if." Vector sneers. Then his eyes narrow. "Who did you say you were again?"

"On your side," Ryouga replies. Silence, save for the sound of waves lapping at the shore. Over the horizon, the cloud-churned sky where Barian's red sun shines. Beyond sight, the Astral World waits. "What's under the Barian Sea, Vector?"

"The Barian Sea, eh?" Vector isn't looking at him, but out over the churning water. "Nothing. Nothing at all."

"If you're going to bring the Barian God back," Ryouga says slowly, "Don't. It won't end well."

" _Heh._ You think you know everything, don't you?" Vector walks over to where Ryouga is. "I was going to give these to Tsukumo Yuuma. But you can have them." He drops five cards into Ryouga's hands, then turns around as if to walk forward into the water. The waves wash over his feet once, twice; where they touch him, rock flesh wears away. He pays it no heed.

Then abruptly, Vector turns back. "You know, I _really_ don't like you," he says, eyes narrowing, and shoves Ryouga backwards into the water.

 

 

* * *

 

 

Ryouga is pretty good at swimming, but this water burns at his eyes and nose, and the buoyant air trapped beneath his jacket forces him to the surface and keeps him from orienting himself. He flails in the water for what seems like an eternity before someone catches him around the arms; drags him out of the water and onto the shore, and claps him on the back as he coughs up the contents of the sea onto the grass.

When he can finally see again, there is a pair of wide violet eyes staring down at him. They blink, and come into focus. "... Shark-kun? It's Shark-kun, right? From Class 2E?"

A twist of irritation.  "Don't call me that."  Ryouga sits up, wriggles out of his sodden jacket and wrings it out.

  
The boy standing over him—it's Shingetsu Rei from Yuuma's class, he'd know that hair and that annoying voice anywhere—blinks. "Sorry, Shark-kun. Is it really true that you got kicked out of a national tournament for cheating?"

_What the hell kind of question is that at a time like this?_

Ryouga ignores it.

Shingetsu helps him back to his hideout:  a small hole in the rock wall lined with moss and rags. Ryouga struggles into the too-small spare clothes Shingetsu hands him, and shivers  while his own clothes dry by the cavern mouth in the breeze from the sea.

Shingetsu finishes fastening the wet clothes to a pole, then turns to Ryouga. "Shark-kun, you're looking for the zero, aren't you? The one that lives in the ruins by the sea."

A circlet, a sword, or a hand of cards. Ryouga does not know what he is looking for, but anything that someone tries to protect, is something worth protecting. "What's in the ruins?"

"The zero," Shingetsu repeats. "Inside the ruins, in the heart of the maze covered in traps. No one who's gone has ever come back. Is that what you're looking for, Shark-kun?"

"Yeah," Ryouga replies. "Then let's go."

The ruins are the remains of a falling-down castle overgrown with ivy and moss. Shingetsu leads him past the crumbling walls and through a door at the side of one broken tower, which opens to —

—the third floor boys' bathroom in Heartland Academy.

"It looked a lot bigger from the outside."

"It is. I know a shortcut," Shingetsu says. He kicks at a tile between the second and third sinks, and a panel swings inward to reveal a crawlspace which he climbs into. Ryouga pokes his head in, hears the muffled sounds of Shingetsu telling him to follow.

The space is narrow and pitch dark, and behind Ryouga, the flap falls shut with a click. Ryouga kicks at it. Solid as a brick wall.

"Oh," Shingetsu says.His face is lit from beneath by the D-Pad he'd pulled out and put face up on the floor to light the way, and now he pushes it ahead of him as he crawls forward. "We better start moving before we run out of air."

Ryouga bangs his head on the ceiling so hard he sees stars. " _What?_ "

"I'll explain later. Just follow."

Ahead of him, Shingetsu pauses and looks both ways.   _Left_ , Ryouga thinks. "Left," Shingetsu's voice says, echoing in the small space, and the light from his device moves in that direction.

Ryouga drags himself on his hands and knees after Shingetsu's voice, crashing into the soles of Shingetsu's shoes, until they reach a cavern wide enough to stand up in. Ryouga gets to his feet and breathes deep with gratefulness. "What the _hell_?"

Shingetsu picks up the D-Pad and directs the light ahead, then grabs Ryouga's hand. "Let's go. I'll explain on the way."

Ryouga recognizes the route now. It's the same path he took through the palace to find the child prince; the same path Prince Vector took through the maze of hedges, and that the Barian Lord took over the wasteland and through the valleys to the sea.

Shingetsu is still talking. "The first time I came through here, and got trapped in there, I didn't know where that tunnel went. If it even went anywhere. And when the air started to thin, I thought I'd die there. But, even not knowing where I was going, I kept moving forward. And in the end, I found the exit..." Shingetsu blinks, then looks at Ryouga. "Is it true, Shark-kun? That you beat up a mafia guy and stole his motorbike, and none of his friends dare to try to get it back?"

"No," Ryouga snaps irritably. "I saved my own money to buy it and anyone who believes that story is an idiot."

In the light from the D-Pad Shingetsu Rei nods solemnly. "You're really cool, Shark-kun. But the mafia story is cooler."

"I said, stop calling me that."

Shingetsu ignores it. "Hey, Shark-kun. No matter what. Keep moving forward, okay? There is a way out, I promise."

He stops to fumble at the wall; pulls at a ring that opens a heavy stone panel embedded seamlessly into the wall, then directs the light down the unmarked hallway beyond.  "Through here, there's a room with three doors. One goes back to the beginning. Another one is a dead end. The last one will take you where you want to go."

"Which is which?" Ryouga asks.

"... I don't know."

"Different question. How do I know you're telling the truth?"

Shingetsu shakes his head. "You can't know, Shark-kun. You can only believe me, or not. But I'll say this: I don't want you dead."

He looks genuinely scared.

"... Shingetsu?"

"Mm?"

"How did you always know which way to go?"

"Oh, the route?" Wide eyes shutter. "It's just the same as Heartland's sewers, isn't it." He digs around in his pockets and comes up with a crumpled hand-drawn map, which he drops into Ryouga's hands. Ryouga unfolds it, and recognizes the lines from the chalk drawing in the palace's front hall. "If you already know where you're going, Shark-kun, then you just need to find the way."

Then he smiles. "Shark-kun, you never called me by my name before."

"Don't get used to it." Ryouga turns, and steps through the door into the fire-lit hall.

 

* * *

 

 

The fire-lit hall is silent save for the sound of his footsteps, thick rubber against stone. Walk down the fire-lit corridor with darkness behind and darkness ahead; listen to the echo of footsteps that are not yours, the sound of wind over the sea, red sky at evening. Seven hundred and seven paces. 

In the room on the hall's far end, the three doors, marked with moving lights that circle like overlay units: 65, 104, 0. The world below, as the world above. Consider again the treasures, and Vector's words.

The child prince's circlet, for innocence lost. _Count down from ten._ The mad king's sword, and the fate brought to pass by his own hands. _No one will live, Nasch._ The cards of betrayal, that masqueraded as cards of faith. _What's under the Barian Sea, eh? Nothing. Nothing at all._ Shingetsu Rei's maps, that led the way. _Shark-kun, you're looking for the zero, aren't you? The one who lives in the ruins by the sea?_

Ryouga steps forward to touch one of the doors, runs his hand over the numeral inscribed. Beneath his fingers the orb of light follows a groove in the wood, a perfect circle.

He lets the warmth of it wash over him like water, and then he pushes open the door and steps through.

 

* * *

 

 

The elevated observation area of the Mad King's execution plaza. At the top of a short flight of stairs, Vector, perched on the throne, face wreathed in shadows so Ryouga cannot see his expression. He does not raise his eyes. "Nasch," he says in acknowledgement.

"Ryouga."

"Whatever. Why are you here?"

"To remind you of something." The terms of a sequence. The terms of an agreement. How much time has passed? "That day, on Earth, I made a promise to protect you."

A sneer. "No one makes promises they're afraid of breaking."

"I do."

"You forgive me? Just like that?"

"..."

He finally looks up to meet Ryouga's eyes.

The ocean of boundless blue, where ships burned like bone-dry forests in fall. The savannahs where sunset lay, red like blood; the rivers of souls that overflowed the day the Mad Prince went to war. They flood the plaza walls as they flood Ryouga's heart, and Ryouga steels himself against the tidal force.

The memory washes against him, an ocean wave upon an island shore, and then recedes.

Ryouga opens his eyes. Vector is still watching him.

"Astral wiped every slate clean when he rewrote the world with the Numeron Code," he says quietly.

"Say it all you like if that makes you feel better."

"It isn't forgiveness. It's punishment," Ryouga says. "You goddamn well better live every minute of every day knowing what you've done. _Come home._ " He clenches his hands into fists at his side, then releases them. "Yuuma's waiting for you. He lost you once. Is he going to lose you again?"

 If Vector says _there was nothing for him to lose in the first place_ , ghost or not, Ryouga will punch him. But the walls of the plaza are silent.

"One more thing. I told Orbital to tear up your Number 104 card if you don't wake up."

"Bastard," Vector breathes, and his eyes narrow a fraction. "Do what you want to me but leave my deck alone."

"So hurry up and stop me."

"Tcheh." Vector stands, scraping the chair. He strides with purpose down the stairs, passes Ryouga without looking at him, and Ryouga turns around to see him go.

On the far end of the observation area there is no execution grounds, no long fall into darkness beneath, only a blinding corridor of light that stretches around and upwards in all directions, encroaching over the walls and up into the sky. Ryouga watches him cross the room, and though he does not look back Ryouga thinks he hears him say, "Thank you, Nasch."

His retreating silhouette disappears into the blinding white. Around Ryouga the plaza crumbles, like a sculpture of dust or the shadow of a valley in sunlight.

 

* * *

 

 

Ryouga slowly becomes aware of his head pillowed in his hands; his legs are stiff, his neck aches from the bad position where he'd fallen asleep in the chair. Sunlight streams through the open window, over the the Barian emblem still wound around his fingers; the chain is loose over his wrist, but Vector's hands are no longer clasped in his own. The bed is empty. On the nightstand in the spot where Vector's deck pouch used to be, a note in Vector's scrawl: _Look in the mirror, Shark-kun._

Ryouga touches his face, and his hands come away stained with ink. He rushes to the bathroom: on his forehead in black marker, painstakingly written in reverse so he can read it: _Shark bastard._

"VECTOR—"

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Door 65 starts a groundhog day loop of the memoryworld, and also locks out the other two choices. With every iteration the memoryworld glitches a bit more until there is nothing left but white static. Door 104 leads to another tiny crawlspace, but this time Shingetsu is not there (and there is no way out).


End file.
